


Your Fellow Man

by yet_intrepid



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Feuilly's friendship with Montparnasse has come to an abrupt and violent end, and his only means of supporting himself seems about to be taken from him as well. However, there is an unexpected source of help--an impulsive gesture of kindness from the art student Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set in 1824. Feuilly is about fifteen here, and Grantaire eighteen or nineteen.

“What’ve you gone and done to yourself?”

Feuilly, pale and in pain, his right arm in a sling which he had somehow managed to tie himself, dropped his head and wracked his mind for an explanation to give his employer, but none came. “I got…attacked,” he finally managed. “Somebody with a knife.” Saying, more truthfully, “a friend with a knife” would have been too dangerous, raising too many questions for M. Gravois—let alone within himself.

_I was attacked by a friend with a knife, just a kid really, because he wanted a girl that was never even mine._

M. Gravois raised his eyebrows. “I hate to say it, Feuilly, because you seem to be a diligent lad, but you can’t work like that.”

He felt blood draining from his face. The words weren’t unexpected, but they were still hard to hear, so quickly, so naturally, as if losing his job meant nothing.

As if it didn’t mean he’d be penniless and thus going hungry while trying to recover.

“I understand,” he heard himself say flatly. And he did understand. He couldn’t assist in an artist’s studio with only one hand, let alone the other effects of the injury. He couldn’t sweep or carry or mix paint and he’d be less than half as fast at tidying up. God, why couldn’t it have been his left arm? He might have had an argument for staying then.

“Should I come back when it’s healed?” he asked, in the same flat tone. “Or will you be taking someone else on permanently?”

M. Gravois shrugged. “You can try coming by if you’d like. Can’t guarantee your position, but we’ll take you back if we don’t find anyone.”

Feuilly nodded. “Thank you, monsieur. I’m—I’m glad you’ve found my work acceptable.” His legs were threatening to buckle. Quickly stiffening them to keep upright, he bowed and turned away, sure that he heard a muttered “good riddance” from one of the young artists with whom he had sometimes conflicted but too weary and defeated to even throw a glance over his shoulder in response.

He was heading for the door when his eyes, which watched his feet resolutely, caught sight of another pair of feet coming in.

“What’s happened to you?” came a voice that he recognized—slightly slurred, but friendly. “Feuilly, isn’t it? You get into a fight?”

“Hello, Monsieur Grantaire,” he responded, lifting his head with an effort. “Not—not a fight, exactly.”

The art student from Gros’ studio, who didn’t ever paint much so far as Feuilly knew and was always swinging by Gravois’ to see a few friends on his way to or from a tavern, seemed to take in his pale and drawn face. “…can’t work much with that hand out of order. You’re usually as formidable as one of the Hekatonkheires, but no more hundred hands, huh?”

Feuilly hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, and merely shrugged. “Yeah, I can’t work. Lost the position.”

His voice was getting weak and shaky. Not now, he begged of the merciless world, not now; let me get away and then I’ll pay attention to the pain. But it pulsed up and down through his arm like nothing he’d ever felt before, and he felt the sweat and chills coming.

Grantaire was talking again, but Feuilly paid no attention. He was focused on standing up, on keeping his head from drooping all the way to his chest, from stilling the shivers that were running through his body—

“—broke two fingers at canne de combat, and couldn’t paint for a month. Old Gros wasn’t too pleased, I can tell you!”

The words faded in and out, and Feuilly felt himself tilting forwards. Suddenly, an arm was around his shoulders, and they were going out the door, and Grantaire was yelling something, and were they getting in a cabriolet? No, couldn’t be…

He passed out just as Grantaire gave the driver his address.


	2. Chapter 2

Why was he warm?

He lay there half-asleep, half-aware of pain, and wondered. He was really too warm for early March, and he felt something soft beneath him…

Something soft.

Realization shot through him and he sat up immediately, opening his eyes to see a messy but decidedly bourgeois one-room flat. He was in the bed. Oh, hell, he was in somebody’s bed; why had he dared; this was going to be bad—

His breathing quick, his eyes wide, he swung his legs over the edge, stood up, took a step, and promptly collapsed onto the floor.

A head was lifted from the table. Grantaire, Feuilly remembered. He had slept in Grantaire’s bed and Grantaire had slept at the table? Oh, what could be worse—

Desperately, he struggled to pull himself off the floor, but Grantaire was already stretching and getting up to help him, half-forcing him back into the bed.

Feuilly, sitting up against the headboard, stared at his lap. “I’m sorry, monsieur.”

Grantaire snorted. “For falling over? You’ve never seen me drunk, if you think that’s so bad.”

He bit his lip, not wanting to be joked with. “For imposing. It’s not my place. I’ll leave right away.” Had his arm been re-bandaged while he slept? The fabric of the sling was white, not filthy beige.

“Hey, I sleep at the table half the time anyway. Can’t take a bottle to bed.” Grantaire shifted awkwardly. “Whatever you want, though. I can go get another mattress; there’s room for one on the floor.”

Feuilly stared at him. “You think if you buy me a mattress instead of giving me your bed, this will be less like charity?”

Grantaire met his eyes, slowly, confusedly, as if the notion of charity had not even crossed his mind. “What?”

Feuilly took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be your charity case, monsieur,” he said. “I might be injured and poor, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be independent.”

Grantaire kept staring. “You were passing out, so I brought you home,” he finally said. “It’s what people do for me. Figured it was, you know, the thing to do.” He sighed. “Look, if you want me to find a friend of yours to look after you instead…is there someone?”

His throat tightened at that and he bit his lip again. The pain in his arm seemed to intensify. “…no,” he managed. “No one.”

Grantaire’s eyebrows rose.

“Everyone I know works with Gravois,” he clarified quickly. “Well—”

And then it tumbled out before he could stop it. “There was a friend, in fact there were two friends, but then…” He jerked his head at his injured arm. “Then this.”

“Thought you said it wasn’t a fight?” Grantaire queried.

“Wasn’t.” Feuilly’s voice was tired. “I didn’t do any fighting.”

He closed his eyes and let the scene wash over him: Montparnasse yelling, his own struggle to comprehend, the realization that Parnasse thought Feuilly’s friendship with Éponine stood in the way of his romantic intentions, the attempt at a defense, the sudden glint of the knife coming at his face as he threw up his arms to protect himself.

Then wrapping the wound as he asked Montparnasse for five minutes with Éponine, five minutes to say goodbye, and hiding his pain as he did because he couldn’t bear to tell her what Montparnasse was capable of.

He still could hardly acknowledge it himself. Montparnasse, twelve-year-old Montparnasse, who had been his disreputable but affectionate little brother for so many years, now swearing that he’d attack again if he ever saw Feuilly around.

Tears welled up behind his squeezed-shut eyelids and he willed them away. He was not going to cry. He was fifteen; he was in the presence of a bourgeois student; the pain he was in was bearable—

But he was alone in the world, endlessly alone.

Abruptly but quietly, Grantaire got up and left the flat, leaving Feuilly to curl up childishly in the bed, surrendering to his feverishness and his tears.


	3. Chapter 3

“I’ll hire you,” blurted Grantaire as he dropped a mattress on the floor a few hours later.

Feuilly blinked. “Hire me for what?” He motioned to his sling. “I’m useless.”

“You have feet, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Feuilly was not sure what he meant by this, but Grantaire didn’t seem drunk. “I can’t stand on them for long though—I mean, I’d run your errands if I could, monsieur, because I need a job, but I don’t think…”

“No, no, no,” Grantaire interrupted. “I went to the studio while I was out and Gros sent me away. He won’t let me work on my painting anymore until I make some studies of feet and get the anatomy down. So—I’ll hire you to let me draw your feet. All you have to do is sit still and put them where I tell you to.”

After pausing a moment to take this in, he nodded. “I can do that, monsieur.”

Grantaire briefly pulled a face, though Feuilly couldn’t tell at what, and started pulling out paper and pencils from a drawer. “Good!” he responded. “How much d’you want for it?”

“Sorry, monsieur?”

“What sort of pay? I’ve never paid someone to sit for me before. You know, just had the people brought in by the studio.”

He tensed nervously at being asked such a question. Was it a trap, he wondered? If he asked too high a price, would he be laughed at, not given the job at all, turned out? But at the same time, Grantaire seemed so easily generous that it might be insulting to him if Feuilly asked for hardly anything.

He stalled. “I’ve never sat for anyone, either.”

“Yeah, but you know what you need to earn, right? If this were a couple hours of your regular job. –Oh, dammit, are you hungry? I ate while I was out but I think there’s at least some bread and cheese in the cupboard.”

There, a way out of asking for an amount of money. “Yes, I’m hungry. I’ll sit for you to earn my meal.”

“I’ll go out and get you something proper when we’re done, then. –If you want something right now, though, the cupboard’s free for raiding.”

Feuilly bit his lip. “What you have here is enough for me, monsieur. You don’t have to purchase something else.”

Grantaire looked uncomfortable. “Erm…pay you the difference between that and a solid meal, then?”

“If that is what you want to do.” He pushed his hair out of his face, unable to express how unpleasantly indebted he already felt despite the strange comfort of Grantaire’s care. What did a bourgeois student normally spend on a meal, anyway?

“Settled then.” Grantaire grabbed a chair from the table. “You can stay in the bed, that’d be best probably for height, just…hmm. Take off the blanket and pull your knees up. The angle about like…that, yeah. Oh, and—” He got up again and opened the cupboard, pulling out a plate and some bread and cheese. “Here you go, no need to be hungry while I sketch.”

Feuilly balanced the plate on his knees, clumsily trying to keep all the crumbs off the sheets as he ate with his left hand and focused on keeping his feet still. The bread was probably a couple days old, but not too hard—it must have been very good bread when fresh, he realized. And the cheese was a kind he’d never tasted before.

After a few minutes, Grantaire had him shift positions. Setting the empty plate aside (he had finished even the crumbs quite quickly), Feuilly adjusted as asked and held still again as Grantaire bent over his paper.

“Now, don’t get the idea in your head that I’m reforming and becoming a diligent, reputable student,” said Grantaire, as he reached out to move Feuilly’s foot into a third angle for drawing. “Might be studying feet the way I’m told, but I’m just the same as ever—I loves the girls and I loves good wine, eh? But I had a bit of an idea for my project and—considering I’ve got to paint sometime if they’re going to let me stay in Paris—I wanted to get it down before Lethe washes it away, you know? If it were any other time, I wouldn’t do feet studies until I had to. Great excuse, not being allowed in the studio. But I’ll never forgive myself if I let this one get away…not that I’ll do it justice, anyhow, but one tries, that’s art.”

Feuilly nodded politely when he thought it was expected of him. Eventually, Grantaire had several pages covered with drawings of Feuilly’s feet, which he proclaimed “good enough.” Setting them aside, he picked up his hat.

“Sorry to leave again—pretty boring here, I know—but I’ve got to see if he’ll take these and let me work. I’ll be back this evening with something to eat. Oh, and here’s your pay.” He held out a ten-sous piece. “That enough?”

Feuilly couldn’t keep back a gasp. “Monsieur, I hardly did anything—it was only a few hours, and the meal too—it’d be unfair for you to give me that.” He had only earned seven sous a day at the studio, and that was for twelve or more hours of constant work.

“Well, I for one don’t think it’s ‘hardly anything’ sitting still that long.” Grantaire kept holding out the coin. “ ‘Sides, you were a hell of a lot more cooperative than the professionals at the studio, and I bet they get paid loads more.”

Hesitant, still unsure whether he was being patronized, Feuilly held out his hand and allowed Grantaire to place the coin in it.

“Can—can you help me over to the mattress before you go?” he asked quietly, as he tucked the money into his trousers pocket. After all he’d allowed Grantaire to do for him, the least he could do was get out of the man’s bed. He’d probably gotten the sheets dirty with his bare feet and filled them with breadcrumbs.

Grantaire nodded and helped him over, an arm around his shoulders, then pulled a blanket from a chest for him to use. Feuilly scolded himself for being surprised; why shouldn’t the bourgeois have unused blankets sitting around in chests?

Grantaire went out, muttering something to himself about the way he’d drawn the curve of Feuilly’s heels, and Feuilly lay down again. He closed his eyes, and the pulsing pain in his arm took over his body and became a rhythm of near-sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Using French currency in the 1800s, adjusted for the cost of living, etc, is hard. Forgive me if my amounts are off here.)


	4. Chapter 4

When Grantaire came back late that evening, Feuilly considered feigning sleep to avoid having to discuss food, but it was no good. Grantaire came over to him and shook his shoulder determinedly.

“Hey—let me have a look at that arm, all right?”

Recognizing the wisdom of this, Feuilly sat up and allowed him to untie the sling. He sat quivering with pain as Grantaire’s fingers worked to undo the knot of the bandage beneath. Even the slightest touch on his warm and sensitive skin made him want to flinch away, but he controlled himself and let out only tiny hisses of pain as the slightly-bloodstained cloth (it must be one Grantaire had put on, Feuilly realized) was pulled away.

The wound beneath was hard to tear his eyes from, although it made him a little sick to his stomach to see it. The cut, on the inside of his forearm on the same side as his thumb, was about four inches long; Feuilly didn’t dare guess how deep. Grantaire had apparently washed it sometime yesterday, but it was crusted over with dried blood and still bleeding a little.

“Not scabbed yet,” muttered Grantaire.

“Should it be?” Feuilly asked. He couldn’t keep his voice from breaking a little, not when his arm was being touched.

Grantaire shrugged. “Should start to, I think. I’m gonna have to wash it again…it’ll hurt, mind.”

Feuilly’s lips tightened, but did his best to look unconcerned. “Whatever you need to do, monsieur.”

After carefully placing Feuilly’s arm down in his lap, Grantaire got up to get a bowl of water and some new cloths. When he came back, he also had a small board and a bottle of alcohol.

“Got to get that dried blood off first.” He dampened a cloth and, holding Feuilly’s arm still with his right hand, began to sponge gently at the wound with his left. Feuilly’s own left hand worried desperately at the blanket until halfway through the cleaning, when a whimper pressed its way out of him and he clutched the blanket with all his strength.

“Sorry,” Grantaire muttered awkwardly.

Feuilly shook his head. “Don’t mind me, monsieur,” he answered weakly, doing his best to take even breaths.

Grantaire, after looking at his pale face a moment, went back to work. With the dried blood gone, the cut started to bleed more quickly. After ensuring that the drips would fall on rags rather than the mattress and Feuilly’s trousers, Grantaire looked up at Feuilly again, seeming reluctant.

“Um—I’m going to wash it out with alcohol now. Against infection. I’ve done it to a few cuts of my own, and it always works, but it, well…it stings like all hell, and there’s no way to make it any easier. I always shout, so if you need to…”

Feuilly nodded grimly. An infection could take his arm or even kill him, he reminded himself, and if this was all he had to do to prevent it…

Grantaire’s left hand tightened around his wrist, making sure his arm would stay still. Feuilly gritted his teeth and squeezed the blanket again.

“You ready?”

He nodded again.

The alcohol-soaked cloth touched the wound.

It was like he was feeling the knife again, the knife all over, and Montparnasse’s face flashed before his eyes, that glint of hatred and the glint of metal, and the terror and the pain, the earth-shattering pain—

He yelled and spilled unthinking tears from screwed-shut eyes.

“It’s done,” broke in a voice, and he realized that the sting was starting to recede. “It’s over…um. You all right?”

“Fine,” Feuilly gasped, suddenly ashamed. He wiped hastily at his damp face with the back of his hand. “Fine—sorry, monsieur—”

Grantaire gave a gruff half-laugh. “Oh, you should have seen me the first time I had alcohol in a cut. A brawler friend of mine taught me the trick, and was fixing me up after a fight—did it without warning me. I screamed and cried like a baby. But that’s the worst over, I promise; I’ll just bandage and splint it now and put it up in the sling again…”

And he did, working adeptly and quickly. When everything was finished, Feuilly’s right arm finally resting in the sling, Grantaire went to deposit the bloody rags in a wash-pile and clean his hands. “You’d better eat now,” he said, “before you get too tired.”

He brought a plate of food—proper food from a café—over to the mattress and sat down on the floor beside it to eat his own meal. Feuilly was too exhausted and dazed by pain to offer up any complaints about charity.

Ten minutes after he finished eating, he fell asleep again.


	5. Chapter 5

They changed the bandages again the next morning, and Feuilly got to see the beginnings of a scab—mixed pale and red, sticky, with blood still leaking through in places. Before long, Grantaire was buttoning up a waistcoat and coat, looking surprised at his own industriousness.

“I’m going to the studio again,” he said, with a deliberately nonchalant shrug. “You can do whatever you like in here. Sleep, eat, make messes, I don’t care. There’s pencils and paper if you sketch at all. And a couple books, if you like to read.”

Feuilly’s eyes widened at that and he immediately pushed himself up on his good arm. He whispered, hesitantly: “I—you’d let me read your books?”

Grantaire lifted his eyebrows. “Sure. Why not?” He crossed over to the chest and dug out five or so volumes, carting them over to Feuilly’s mattress. “There’s a translation of the Iliad, there’s—hmm. Two novels, but you probably don’t want that one. Here’s a treatise on painting and color composition by Constant de Massoul. Not exactly light reading, but hey, if you’re interested. And here’s Voltaire’s _Candide._ There’s probably some other stuff in the trunk, but I’ve got to go…is this all right for now?”

Feuilly could not lift his eyes from the volumes, which he had not yet dared to touch. Mute with astonishment, he nodded fervently, and Grantaire got up and went away.

Feuilly’s hand shook as he put it out and laid it on the cover of one of the novels. He had taught himself to read from signs in the street and stolen newspapers, from staring at textbooks over the art students’ shoulders, from looking at instructions and orders in the workshop.

He had never been allowed to hold a book.

Six years, he had been teaching himself to read, and not one book.

Now there were five on the floor in front of him.

Suddenly overwhelmed by a hunger for learning which banished his fear, Feuilly grabbed the painting treatise and held it in his hand, feeling the worn gray cover for just a moment before opening it almost reverently to the introduction.

“The arts arose from a natural desire,” he worked out slowly, whispering the words as he discovered them, “of adding to our enjoyments.” He covered up “enjoyments” with his finger, syllable by syllable, until he could put it together, a smile tugging at his lips when he pronounced all the sounds in sequence and understood their sense. He struggled on, with many pauses. “Man felt at an early period, that he was not born to grovel upon the earth like the other animals! His faculties tended of themselves progressively to develop—”

And there he stopped. He wasn’t quite sure of the word “progressively,” but it was beautiful on the page, and something about those three sentences was unlike anything he had found on signs or in scraps of newspaper.

He felt so strange that he couldn’t go on. Instead, he went back to the beginning and read the sentences aloud again, louder this time and with less hesitation.

“The arts arose from a natural desire of adding to our enjoy-ments. Man felt at an early period, that he was not born to grovel upon the earth like the other animals! His faculties tended of themselves progress—progressively to develop.”

It was as if the book knew him, he thought, dazed and bewildered, almost delirious—knew even the things he didn’t tell anyone. It knew about how he wanted to be better. It knew why he felt so clean and full of life when he looked at some beautiful piece of art. It even knew why he wanted to read.

He stared at the page, not reading onwards because he had found all that he could hold for now.

An affirmation that he was a fellow man, and that he was not born to grovel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The passage Feuilly reads comes from the introduction to Constant de Massoul's "Treatise on the Art of Painting and the Composition of Colours," which was published in 1797 and can be read on Google Books.


	6. Chapter 6

Grantaire came back in the afternoon, scowling and walking with the sway of a practiced drinker. Feuilly looked up from the art book as he came in.

Absorbed for hours in reading, he had not noticed until now that he was hungry. And although he remembered Grantaire telling him that eating was fine, he’d had enough experience in life not to take that quite at face value. Last thing he needed now, he thought as he ran his fingertips over the gray cover of the book he held, was to make a misstep and end up back on the street injured with no work.

He’d gone far longer without food before, of course, and he figured that even while recovering he could afford to miss a couple meals. But he had that ten-sous piece in his pocket, and not using it to eat and strengthen himself and thus get back on his own two feet faster irked him. Besides, he had some vague notion that Grantaire would be bothered if he knew Feuilly wasn’t eating.

If he thought he could manage a trip down to some bakery, he’d have slipped out of the flat and just hoped to be allowed back in upon returning. For now, however, crossing the room was the limit of his capabilities.

So he swallowed hard and addressed Grantaire, who was sitting on the bed with his chin in his hands.

“Monsieur?” He cursed the way his voice shook. Grantaire didn’t look up.

“…Monsieur Grantaire?” Feuilly tried again. “Monsieur, I’m sorry, but I need to purchase some food. I wish I were well enough not to trouble you about it, but I can pay for whatever you have here, or…”

He trailed off at the continued lack of response. Several uncomfortable minutes later, however, Grantaire’s head jerked up.

“What’d you say?” he said, with a gulping hiccup.

Feuilly repeated himself hesitantly. He’d had enough experience with drunks—and with Grantaire wandering in and out of Gravois’ studio—not to be scared, exactly, but his experience also meant that he had good grounds not to be comfortable, either. He’d never seen Grantaire at all dangerous when drunk, but that had always been in public, and he knew that in the man’s own flat, things could be different.

In response to the repeated question, Grantaire stared uncomprehendingly for a minute. Then he waved his hand towards the cupboards. “Should be something there. Bought things while you were asleep before. Thought I already said I didn’t care about you taking whatever.”

He dropped into brooding again, and Feuilly swallowed again and stood up. It took him several long moments to get steady on his feet, but once he had, he managed to cross to the table, and then pass it to open the cupboards.

He found bread and a sizable pile of apples, from which he selected one. There was also a tin of sugared almonds, which he was tempted to try. But he moved past them, finding another tin labeled (he sounded it out) “scotch comfits,” half of a pastry with dried fruit in it, assorted dishes, several bottles of alcohol, and—his hand encountered something hard and rectangular. He picked it up.

A book. There was a book in Grantaire’s cupboard.

Feuilly felt a surge of something very like anger as he threw a glance over at Grantaire, who still sat on the edge of the bed and was muttering to himself in what seemed to be another language. Why would anyone carelessly put a book, something so full of knowledge and possibilities, in a cupboard with food and drink that could dirty it?

He turned it to see the spine, but he couldn’t read it. The marks were letters, he could tell, but not letters he knew.

Another language. It had to be. He’d heard some of the art students talking about the Greek and Roman myths they sometimes illustrated, and quoting phrases he couldn’t understand—it only made sense that those words would have a written form, and that they would look different.

Feuilly opened to the middle and stared down at the script, aching at the presence of knowledge, even access to knowledge! that he could not avail himself of. Running his thumb down the pristine page, he bit back wordless, pitiful cries of mingled frustration and joy.

Everything new, everything mysterious—a whole world—seemed to be at his fingertips, but it was not to become his.

And then resignation came, and hardness in the set of his lips and his mind. Not now, but someday?

Someday he would learn everything.

Carefully picking up some bread and an apple as well (although he was not very hungry, not now that he had begun to think on the hunger of his mind), he balanced everything in one hand until he reached the table and placed the book down. As he lowered himself into a chair, so exhausted from standing that he hadn’t enough energy to make it back to his mattress, he caught sight of Grantaire.

Grantaire, who could surely read this book he owned, despite its other language and other letters. Grantaire, who could draw and paint and got to study at a fine studio.

Grantaire, who had fallen asleep drunk.

Feuilly felt a surge of that same anger, this time mingled with pity, before he reminded himself that he ought not to think that way of a benefactor and turned his attention to eating diligently.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More quoting from Constant de Massoul's painting treatise in this chapter.

“I have to draw your feet again,” Grantaire said bleakly when he finally woke up that evening. “I got the angles and curves all wrong. Old Gros got to use the canvas as an example to the younger students of everything to avoid on that, so at least I have served some purpose, hmm? Thankfully he hinted it’s fixable if I do some ‘proper’ drawings this time.”

Feuilly nodded. “I’ll sit for you, of course.”

Grantaire heaved a deep sigh. “Thanks. I’ll get us some food and be right back to start. Hmm, getting dark; I’ll pick up some coal and candles too so there’ll be light to work by.”

When Grantaire returned, however, he didn’t just have food and candles and coal. He had another man with him, someone several years older than himself, broad-shouldered and laughing and wearing the most forward orange waistcoat Feuilly had ever seen.

He was a fighter. Feuilly, having lived on the streets and spent more time than he would have liked observing Montparnasse’s gang, recognized that immediately in his build and posture. Nervous at the new presence, Feuilly sat on his mattress with his knees pulled up and stared at the pages of the art treatise in order not to draw attention, although his wary eyes kept flickering up to observe.

“You have all the luck at dominoes,” the stranger was saying with a grin. “Pardieu, how much did you win from me in just two games, you lucky bastard? And all last week, straight wins. Nobody beats me like that; I don’t see how you do it.”

Grantaire smiled back, although more wryly. “Well, if you hadn’t bet it all, I wouldn’t have won it all,” he pointed out. “And my good luck at dominoes hardly balances out yours with the girls, and all my hard fortune at painting.”

The other man grimaced, turning one of the chairs backwards and settling down at the table. “You told me about your issues with the feet. What’s the subject?”

“Hermes as a beggar, in Ovid’s tale of Baucis and Philemon.” Grantaire sat down as well, tilting his chair back. “He and Zeus always are shown disguised as two old men, but I always had the idea that he’d be a young peasant instead. And he’s weary from walking all day, you know, and he’s stopping to rub his feet and wrap one that’s bleeding. They’re as much the focus of the picture as his hands and face. That’s why I can’t get them wrong. But I think I’m going to have to start over again. My anatomy’s off and the paint job itself is just rubbish.”

Feuilly listened carefully. He had not heard much of Hermes and Zeus, perhaps their names in the studio a few times when the young artists discussed the subjects of their paintings, nor had he heard of Ovid at all, but he hoped to learn two things from the conversation—first, the stories educated people know, and second, how to pose his feet better when Grantaire next hired him as he promised.

“You don’t paint rubbish,” the orange-waistcoated man said. “I’ve never seen you paint rubbish.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “What would you know of art, Bahorel?”

“Enough to tell what’s rubbish!” he shot back.

Feuilly looked between them, wondering if they would begin to argue, but Grantaire laughed, and not unkindly. “Well, I think your choice in waistcoats is rubbish.”

Bahorel squared his shoulders. “This, I’ll have you know, was highly recommended by a prestigious tailor!”

Feuilly looked back at his book as they continued to bicker cheerily about clothing, for he didn’t want to think of how strange it was that some men could see prestigious tailors and ask whether they should wear orange waistcoats or red, while others were lucky to get hold of a jacket come winter.

 _Distance of time and place,_ he read, _nay, even death itself, can no longer be separate friends; the hand of the Painter will be able to reunite them._ Perhaps that meant that a story from long ago or far away, like Monsieur Grantaire was talking about with Hermes, could be right in front of the people who saw a painting?

_Striking resemblances will be offered to the deceived eye, and make nearly the same impression upon the mind as the objects themselves; all will be imitated and embellished!_

“So seeing the painting of Hermes would be almost like actually seeing Hermes, even though you can’t…”

And then he found to his horror that he had been reading and thinking aloud, and was being stared at.

Bahorel got off his chair and came to sit cross-legged next to the mattress. “Who’re you?” he asked. “I didn’t notice you. Grantaire, you should’ve introduced us.”

“I was going to, but you asked about the painting and I forgot.” Grantaire let his chair fall with a thud onto all four legs. “That’s Feuilly. Smart kid. Likes to read a hell of a lot more than I ever did.”

Feuilly dropped his head before Bahorel’s inquiring gaze. “Yes, I’m Feuilly, monsieur,” he said. “Monsieur Grantaire kindly took me in when I lost my job because my arm is hurt, and he does allow me to read his books.”

“Good to meet you. I’m Bahorel.” He grinned. “Grantaire took me in once when I’d gotten knocked out at boxing, so you see we aren’t that different, and I’ve had the honor of doing the same for him since.”

And that’s where we are different, thought Feuilly; I can’t reciprocate at all. This is just charity. But he said, “Yes, monsieur.”

Bahorel looked at him oddly, and Feuilly had the sudden idea that he did not like being called monsieur, but the idea of saying the man’s name to his face as if they were equals put fear at the pit of his stomach.

“How’d you come by the injury?” Bahorel asked, as if anticipating a good story, and the moment passed and the fear became palpable. Feuilly had not the least idea how to explain.

“Um,” he said, “someone had a knife, and—”

Bahorel’s eyes widened and he grew serious. “Do you mind if I see? I’ve had more experience with these things than Grantaire has.”

Feuilly’s face showed hesitance and pain against his will, but he answered bravely. “That’s good of you, monsieur. I don’t mind.”

Grantaire moved over to the mattress as well. “You were saying something about Hermes and truth in painting while you were reading. You want to talk about that while he looks at it? For a distraction?”

Feuilly looked up at him. “Actually,” he said, his voice shaking at making such a request as well as at the anticipation of increased pain, “would you tell me the story? Or read it to me?”

Grantaire hopped up for his copy of Ovid as Bahorel untied the sling, and started to read as practiced hands pried the bandage from the sticky scab.


	8. Chapter 8

“So tell me about yourself,” Bahorel said, as he and Feuilly ate and Grantaire busied himself drawing. He flashed Feuilly another of his wide, friendly grins. “Where’d Grantaire find you? Not boxing, I’d imagine.”

“There isn’t much to say, monsieur,” replied Feuilly. His nervous eyes wandered around the room and finally fell to his plate. “I used to work at Monsieur Gravois’ studio, cleaning up after the art students and running errands for them, and Monsieur Grantaire has friends there, so sometimes he goes by to visit. He came in when I was leaving after telling Monsieur Gravois what had happened, and was very kind to bring me home with him.”

Bahorel raised his eyebrows and looked at Grantaire. Grantaire glanced up from his sketching long enough to say, “He was passing out.”

“I don’t wonder,” Bahorel said. “That’s some cut you have there. Not just some slip of a dull pocketknife, eh?”

Feuilly’s throat was tight, and his breathing quickened as he cast about in his mind for the right thing to say. Why did this student care how he’d come by the injury? Was he suspicious that Feuilly was involved in crime himself, and seeking to report him? Was he just looking for intrigue? Either way, Feuilly was determined to guard his tongue, but he still had to say something.

“I wish it had been a pocketknife,” he decided on.

Bahorel chuckled sympathetically. “Even with a bigger blade, that’d have taken some slip.”

“It wasn’t a slip,” Feuilly answered at once, and hated himself.

Bahorel, surprisingly, was quiet a moment. “I see,” he said eventually. “An attack or a fight?”

“Um,” said Feuilly.

“I see,” Bahorel said again. And they paused, hearing only Grantaire’s pencil scratching on the paper.

“Was it a friend?” Bahorel finally asked. His tone was casual, but gentle.

Feuilly bit his lip. “Yes.”

And then Bahorel’s hand was resting on his good shoulder, big and comforting and warm and solid, and tears and words were threatening to spill over.

“…he was like my little brother,” Feuilly finally blurted out, though his closed eyelids still kept the tears back. “But he started running with this gang, and, well, thieving instead of working, and one Christmas they gave him a knife. And he loves it more than anything else. But we have a friend, and her name is Éponine. I…when I wasn’t working, I spent a lot of time with her—she learned properly to read, and all. And he fancies her; he thought I was in the way of that. I asked him to change his ways one time too many, and was with Éponine when he wanted to be with her one time too many. We argued, and then…”

A hot tear leaked from one of his eyes, landing emphatically on his shirt. Bahorel squeezed his shoulder.

“How old’s your friend?” he asked.

“About twelve.” Feuilly sighed shakily. “I’ve looked after him for years…I never would have thought…I guess I should have, though.”

“Hey now,” said Bahorel, “you can’t take the blame for what he did. I mean—you’re the one that got wronged here. You’ve got a damn knife wound in your arm. Don’t you go saying that’s your fault.”

Feuilly’s voice caught in his throat. “But I should have—I wanted to save him—I wanted to keep him from—”

“Listen to me,” Bahorel said. “In the end, everybody has to make their own choices. You can do your best to influence somebody else, but his will is still his own. If he wants to be a thief, only he can really change his mind on that. But take you, on the other hand. You wanted to work and read and all that. And so you do. Your future’s in your hands. Even if people try to stop you, you’re still going to do your best to work and read, aren’t you? Because that’s your choice.”

Feuilly nodded.

“Well, it’s the same with him. Except he made a choice that hurts people and himself.”

At last Feuilly opened his eyes and let the tears spill out as he looked over at Bahorel. “He’ll end up in prison,” he whispered. “Prison is awful. I don’t want him to go there. I wish I could have helped him make better choices.”

“He’s still a kid,” Bahorel said. “A lot of things can change after you’re twelve.”

Feuilly looked down. “Maybe for people like you,” he said. “Not—not for us. We just have to try to find some sort of a life and stick with it, you know? And crime sticks to you, too. It’s not easy to just leave.”

And he looked at his bandaged arm, and thought again of how he had no job anymore, no friends, an injury that was still a risk, no idea of how he would support himself once he had healed from it, and no guarantee of how long the charity he was currently relying on would last.

He had nothing, and certainly not a future.

The harshness of it all stopped his tears. He wiped his wet face with the back of his left hand, wondering why he was discussing all this with a bourgeois young man who had friends, money enough for fine clothes and gambling, easy laughter on his lips, and a chance at an education.


	9. Chapter 9

Bahorel went away. Feuilly went to sleep, curled tight on his left side facing the wall, the pain in his arm mingling dismally with the pain that sat deep inside his chest. And he dreamed.

He dreamed of Montparnasse, seven years old and round-faced, sitting patiently as Feuilly combed through his black curls with his fingers like a nursemaid or a mother would do with a brush before bed. He dreamed of his own last theft, the ten sous that had landed him in the police station and lucky not to be properly jailed, coinciding with Parnasse’s first. Dreamed of the argument that had followed about survival, morality, following the system—topics all too heavy for boys of twelve and nine, but unavoidable—and dreamed of that knife, moving through Montparnasse’s hands throughout the years.

Cutting bread, spinning carelessly, gesturing in anger, severing inconvenient threads from fraying clothes, glinting in the dusk and the dawn and coldly shining on winter nights: the knife had been everywhere from the day Montparnasse received it.

And Feuilly dreamed of the hands that held it, how they had changed. How small they had once been, reaching to his own for guidance, clinging earnestly. And now they were long-fingered and dexterous and insincere and too old for a boy, a gamin’s hands that were trying to be a dandy’s, and yet with a knife twirling through the fingers.

And as the hands moved, he felt that it was wrong, all wrong, and he was angry and full of regret but through it all he was afraid, afraid, afraid.

And then the hands and the knife were moving towards him again, rushing and yet unbearably slow, and he did not know if he could get his arm up in time…

And there was pain and his legs were buckling and he was clutching his forearm and gasping and he could not bear it, it was too much, and Montparnasse was just standing there, watching, the knife dripping and gleaming in his hand—

Feuilly woke himself up with a yell, and found his arm throbbing. He was sweating, too. With effort, he rolled onto his back and lay as still as he could. He tried to get hold of his breathing, but the pain and the memories were too much, and he could not keep himself from shaking and gasping.

“Feuilly?”

Grantaire’s voice. Feuilly froze, unsure what to say.

“Feuilly?”

Footsteps. Grantaire was getting up in the darkness, and Feuilly had to say something.

“I’m sorry, monsieur,” he managed, his voice high and unsteady. “I’m fine.”

But Grantaire lit a candle and came over, bleary-eyed and gruff-voiced. “Is it your arm?”

“…yes,” Feuilly said. He supposed he was telling enough of the truth.

“Some brandy would dull it a bit and help you sleep again, if you want.”

He bit his lip. “You’re very kind, monsieur, but—”

But Grantaire was already moving over to the cupboard and pouring from a bottle into a glass. “There,” he said, crossing the room to the mattress. He handed the glass to Feuilly and shuffled back towards his bed, extinguishing the candle.

Feuilly, deciding that he may as well not waste what he’d been given, raised the glass of brandy to his mouth and drank. It burned his throat, drawing his some of attention from the warmth and throbbing of his arm as he swallowed forcefully.

Grantaire was right about its effects. A few minutes later, Feuilly was drowsing off again…and yet, Montparnasse’s face was still in front of him. Charming, half-smiling—dangerous.

“I swear it, Feuilly,” he heard in his head, as he hovered between thoughts and dreams—heard that voice which had lisped his name with missing front teeth and cried on his shoulder in the night. “If I ever see you around here, I’ll knife you again.”


	10. Chapter 10

Feuilly woke mid-morning the next day to the noise of Grantaire dragging an easel into the room. Sitting up hurriedly, he struggled to clear his mind of the nightmares. His head felt heavy, but that was a distraction from his arm, at least.

“Good morning,” said Grantaire absently, as he struggled with the easel. “Some breakfast on the table. Going to paint here today.” Though it was around ten o’clock in the morning, there was an open bottle of wine on the table as well, and a used glass. Feuilly’s brow creased—how normal that was, he couldn’t be sure.

He started to get to his feet. “Should I help?” he asked, gesturing tentatively to the easel.

Grantaire shrugged. “Eat something,” he said. “Then you can mix paint if you like, or…I don’t know.”

Feuilly went obediently to the table—he was a bit steadier on his feet now—and allotted himself a portion of bread. As he sat down and began to eat, Grantaire set up the easel near the trunk where his books were and uncovered the painting on it. Feuilly turned in his chair to look at it.

It was unfinished, but something about it attracted Feuilly at once. Maybe it was the face of the god-turned-young peasant, frustrated by his pain but forced to sit down and give in to it, vulnerable but determined. Maybe it was the sky, the stormy clouds threatening a downpour. Maybe it was the way the hands held the feet to bandage them, clumsy and careful all at once.

He wanted that painting, wanted to look at it and know it. Somehow, it felt like part of himself.

“That’s amazing, monsieur,” he breathed, before he even realized he was speaking.

“No,” said Grantaire, “it’s rubbish. I’m starting over.”

And he pulled the painting from the easel and set it rather carelessly on his bed, then set up a canvas with a sketch on it.

By the time Feuilly was finished with his bread, Grantaire had blended a few colors of paint in little bowls, had dabbed them onto his palette, and was squinting at the page with his brush in hand. Feuilly knew better than to interrupt a painter at that stage; he’d been hit enough in the studio to learn when he could ask for a task or report finishing one, and when he was safest keeping quiet and out of the way. But after Grantaire had made two strokes of his brush, he turned to Feuilly abruptly.

“Do you paint?”

Feuilly blinked. Grantaire waited.

“Me, monsieur?” he finally said.

Grantaire nodded. “Because if you like that other version and you want to play around with it, I’m not going to finish it. This sketch is worlds more presentable. So if you want to see for yourself how the colors work like in that book, you know, you can lay it out on the table and grab some paint; I’ve got brushes I don’t use anymore in the cupboard; might be fun for you.”

Feuilly blinked again. Grantaire lifted his eyebrows. Setting down his palette and sticking the end of his paintbrush in his mouth, he picked up the first painting and brought it over to the table. Feuilly hurried to move the bottle and glass out of the way.

After laying out the canvas, Grantaire headed back to the easel, prepared a palette in a matter of seconds, and handed it over to Feuilly. In a moment more, he had out the old brushes and a cup of water.

“There,” he said.

“Monsieur,” began Feuilly.

Grantaire dismissed him with a wave of the hand and started back to the easel.

“Monsieur,” he tried again, “you’re kind but—”

Grantaire had gone back to contemplating his own canvas. Feuilly, from long habit of self-preservation, shut his mouth at once.

_But I’m right-handed,_ he finished to himself as he turned to contemplate the unfinished painting, his right arm warm and throbbing and heavy in its sling.

But at the same time, when would he ever have this chance again? To take a painting which had done for him what the book he was reading said that art could do, and try to participate in making it? Of course, he knew he had no skill in painting, but he could look and see what had been done and try to guess what remained to be done.

There was one corner of the sky that remained unpainted. Feuilly wrinkled his brow and stared at it, and at the surrounding sky, and at the colors on the palette he still held in his left hand.

Then, setting the palette down on the table, he took up a paintbrush instead.

It sat awkwardly in his fingers, but he tried to grasp it how he had always seen done, and he dipped it into the water to soften the old bristles and then into the light blue-gray paint.

Curiously, tentatively, Feuilly touched brush to canvas.


End file.
